"Brother Yang, good news, good news... The price of food has dropped!" After seeing Yang Shanlu, Liu Dabangmai came to announce the good news.
"Really? Then you are talking about how to fall?" After Yang Shanlu listened, there was a hint of anger on his face.
At this moment, the somewhat dull Liu Dabangmao hadn't noticed yet, he still grinned and said, "Brother Yang, don't you know, the price of the food has dropped drastically as soon as the summer grain is harvested! It was still 80 taels a few days ago. The price of one stone has dropped to one or two to one stone now! You say it is not too good! Haha!"
"What?" After Yang Shanlu listened, he slapped the table suddenly and shouted: "It's time to kill! These black-hearted grain merchants should all be killed!"
"What?" Liu Dabangma didn't understand, and said in a puzzled way: "Brother Yang, isn't it a good thing that food prices have fallen? Originally the prices were so high that the people couldn't afford them at all. Now that the prices have fallen, the people can't buy them. Can you afford food?"
"Hey, you don't understand!" Yang Shanlu just sighed slightly... The so-called sinister heart, things are not so simple! However, Yang Shanlu had always treated this club brother as his own brother, so he patiently explained it to him.
But after he finished speaking, Liu Dabangmai understood the way... No wonder the price of food has fallen to such a bizarre level, it turns out that this is the reason!
Specifically, this also involves the imperial summer tax system (that is, after the summer harvest, farmers will need to pay the summer tax, and the collection time is generally from June to August). A whip method implemented by Zhang Juzheng during the Wanli period.
The so-called whip method is that summer taxes and autumn grains are no longer levied on grain, but converted into cash for payment. The advantage of this is to facilitate transportation and reduce road losses. It is also convenient for the country and the people.
I have to say that Zhang Juzheng’s intentions are good, but he was taken advantage of by the grain merchants below. To give a simple example, isn’t it the season for grain harvest? Very well, these grain merchants are joining forces to suppress grain prices! And keep food prices extremely low!
After the farmers have harvested their grains, they must sell their grains and pay taxes (the summer tax is limited to be paid in August), but the problem is that grains that could have been sold for eight or two and one stone can now only be sold for one or two silver! In other words, they have to sell more food before they have the money to pay taxes!
(For details, please refer to Mr. Ye Shengtao’s overcharged three or five bucks. The situation is similar. Anyway, when the grain is harvested, the price of grain plummets! Peasants are killed.)
Then the bigger problem is that people have to survive after paying taxes, and then because they sell more food, the family’s food stocks are also reduced. In this way, when the spring is not available, the farmers have to spend money to buy food. (If you don't have money, you can only sell land) And you have to spend more money to buy enough food! (At that time, the price of food rose to eight or two and one stone)
Therefore, the farmers who were forced to participate in the commercial economy were almost killed all the time.
Even with Yang Shanlu's wisdom, he can directly see the essence of things! What these profiteers did was actually shaking the foundation of Daming! Didn’t Tartar always dream of entering the Central Plains? These profiteers are the accomplices of the Tartars! Help him to abuse!
And this is also very obvious. In the three hundred years since the founding of Ming Dynasty, the social form at this time has developed to a deformed state! That is, one percent of the people occupy 99 percent of the land! Social wealth is concentrated in the hands of a small group of people! The self-employed farmers, who account for only a small proportion of the population, estimated to be around one-twentieth, bear the main tax revenue of Ming Dynasty!
(As for commercial taxes, it’s better than nothing. It’s like having people and jinshi on board the car. All commercial goods you carry can be tax-free, and all the land produced by officials can be tax-free. So the most important thing for a country is Taxes are basically paid by those self-cultivating farmers who own the land)
But the problem is that after 300 years of mergers, the number of self-cultivating farmers in Daming has been reduced to a very dangerous proportion! Yang Shanlu estimates that it is only one-twentieth! In other words, out of the 100 million population of Daming, only 5 million self-employed farmers bear all of Daming's taxes!
But if that's the case, the profiteers still don't let them go (usually they are a combination of government and business, the merchants come forward, and the officials behind them are hidden behind the scenes) and they want to plunder the land of these self-cultivators! Even to them, every time God descends a catastrophe year, it is a feast for them to carnival! (The grain harvest fails and the self-employed farmers are forced to sell their land and pay taxes, and then they can make a profit!)
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But the question is, when all the land is concentrated in the hands of the big businessmen and bureaucrats, who else will pay the taxes
Even this is still a vicious circle... When the country's tax revenue is further reduced, in order to maintain the operation of this country, the court has to further increase the tax amount, which in turn forced more homesteaders to go bankrupt...
(In the end, these bankrupt farmers, whether they starve to death or become bandits, are a kind of harm to this country, because no one pays taxes, and the country ceases to exist... What resistance will it take then? What about the Tartar invasion?)
(One more thing, because this question is extremely important and related to Daming's survival, so Baima's explanation is a little bit more, and it won't be any more in the future)
So it's a sigh of such a serious situation, these guys who have been black and gutted, they just don't know it! In other words, it doesn’t matter if I realize it... It’s a matter of dying some mud legs! Even if this country is dead, it's a matter for me! The fortune that should be made has to be made!
So in the face of this kind of scum that is so upright to the country, how can you not make Yang Shanlu angry!
After Yang Shanlu finished explaining, Liu Dabangmai finally figured it out, and he was so angry that his eyes fired on the spot... Remember that when he was just a small army, he had eaten enough of his own landlessness. ! (That would have been taken away by the military attache of the guard) But now? These bastards are actually doing this again!
But I have to say that Liu Dabangmao, who has a simple class sentiment, is rarely smart this time and came up with a'good way'.
"Brother Yang, since these grain merchants collect grain at a reduced price, let's just go to their grain store to buy more grain! Anyway, the price is only one or two silver and one stone. Wouldn't it be good to buy more to subsidize the farmers? "Liu Dabangmao just turned his eyes.
"It's not that simple!" Yang Shanlu smiled bitterly: "If you don't believe me, you can go to those grain shops. The price they put up is definitely one or two one stone, but if you ask them to buy it, you can buy it every time. It’s not bad to get a bowl of rice."
"Ah!" Now Liu Dabangma was dumbfounded, and then he really understood, damn it, it turned out that this was a guise, in fact, their real intention was to spot the land in the hands of the farmers! Anyway, don't let it go!
"Damn it! Damn it!" Liu Dabangmao, with a simple nature, was so angry that he was angry. He said angrily: "Brother Yang, please say something... I'll take the soldiers to copy these bastards' food shops!"
"No, this can't be solved by force!" Yang Shanlu shook his head when he heard this. Although he wanted to do this too, he knew very well that behind the price of food, there was an economic fight. war! Or it is a food price war! It can't be settled by using swordsmen!
Because even if you arrest those grain merchants and copy those grain shops, they can say the same thing. They didn't steal one, two didn't snatch them, one would sell and the other would buy, so why would you arrest people!
And Yang Shanlu also knows that catching these grain merchants is small, and the chain of interests hidden behind them is the big one! Those big bosses who are hidden behind the scenes are all very powerful existences. At that time, their interests will be touched...
It's just that Yang Shanlu still knows that in order to preserve this country and to govern Shanxi to produce results, this economic war must be fought!
Because under today’s natural disasters, Shanxi’s social environment and economic ecology are already very fragile. If the only remaining self-cultivation farmers go bankrupt, and then join the army of refugees, or even evolve into an army of invaders, it can be said that the difficulty of governing Shanxi will increase. Dozens of times! At that time, it will be more difficult to recover again! Therefore, he must fight this food price war! Although tens of thousands of people, I am going!
"Go and invite me Mr. Hu." Yang Shanlu finally made the decision.
Soon, the new staff member Hu Yuanmou arrived, and the matter was of great importance. Yang Shanlu called Zuo Maodi, Sun Changming and others. After everyone sat together and discussed in secret, a game involving Shanxi The war for the people's livelihood has begun!
The largest grain store in Taiyuan City, Love the People's grain store.
The guys in the past few days are very busy, including the shopkeeper in the Aimin Food Store, who also sits in person and presides over the grain collection. Of course, their mood is very good... because the mud legs that have harvested the grain are in order to pay Tax, I have to sell food!
Then, in the past few days, there have been farmers one after another. After harvesting the summer grain, in order to pay taxes, they began to sell grain in the city.
But when these farmers who had experienced various natural disasters and finally harvested a little grain after entering the city looked forward to selling them at a good price, they were all stunned! They couldn't even believe the food price tag in front of them!
"What? The price of grain is only one or two and one stone? The store, you are making a mistake, right?" Seven or eight farmers pushing the cart to sell the grain asked dumbfoundedly.
"Hey, how could you make a mistake!" The big shopkeeper who was sitting in the shop smoking dry cigarettes just replied with a stern word: "This is my master's benevolent governance! Don't be haunted by the benevolent government! Don't ask me if you don't know it, otherwise you have to ask for it. You go to court in the yamen!"
"As for what kind of benevolent governance is, it is like today's holidays, the price of food is soaring, and the people can't afford to buy food, so my master has pity on those untouchables and specially lowered the price of food."
These peasants don’t understand the benevolent governance of the elder, and they will be brought to court if they sell food or something, and they are even more afraid! But the price of one stone or two is really unacceptable for them...
After working hard for nearly half a year, I rushed to the field day and night, and finally harvested a little life-saving food, or the kind of less than three or five buckets, so I originally expected to pay the tax and make do with it. , But now, it’s not enough to sell them all! (The price of food a few days ago was still eight taels of silver and one stone)
But in this transaction, the weak peasants have no bargaining power, so these few peasants really have no choice, and the shopkeeper knelt down with a plop! Weeping with tears, she pleaded, "Thank you, the shopkeeper! I beg you! Otherwise, we will not be enough to sell all the food!"
Some farmers even knocked their heads out of blood when they thought of their wives and children waiting to be fed at home!
But after seeing such a tragic scene, the shopkeeper was completely indifferent. He just said with a chuckle, "Oh, folks, don’t you want to be like this. This makes me very embarrassed, but the price is set by the master. Yes, I have no right to change it! Besides, if there is not enough food, you can still sell the land."
Nima, these peasants were so angry that they were going to scold their mothers after hearing this. The land is their **, but if they sell all the land, how can they survive in the future? Isn't it because they don't even have enough food to sell now, and should they take away all their sex
After seeing that all the hard begging for mercy was ineffective, these honest farmers didn't know what to do.
"Why don't we go to other grain shops? I heard that there are more than a dozen grain shops in Taiyuan Mansion." It was too much to be held back, and one of the farmers suggested.
"Sneer—" Before the other farmers could speak, a guy in the grain shop smiled: "Want to sell at a high price? Tell you the truth, let alone the entire Taiyuan Mansion, even the entire Shanxi, the price is the same. !"
Well, such words shocked these farmers again! It seems that this is as dark as the crows in the world! These bastards have already set a unified price! But, even if they bullied them so blatantly, what should we do? Bring the food back? This is obviously unrealistic, waiting to be sold and paid for tax! But if it is sold like this, how will it survive in the future
But at a time when these farmers were in a dilemma, at this time, a few people in the city came to the grain shop to buy rice.
"The shopkeeper, let's buy some rice." Before the price of food was high, the people in the city were not having a good time, so after finding that the price of food had suddenly dropped to a couple of silver and a stone, these people who hadn't eaten for a long time hurried over. Now, for fear of missing this great opportunity!
"Buy rice? Alright!" One of the guys gave them a slanting look, and then replied lazily. Then he didn't care how many people were going to buy from the rice tank. He scooped a bowl of rice (the smallest bowl, about one or two meters), plopped and put it on the counter, saying: "See if you can buy one bowl of rice per day per person, and one household is not allowed to repeat it." buy!"
"What?" The people who came to buy rice were shocked! I heard that the price of rice had fallen sharply, and many people came with a rice bag. They planned to take this opportunity to buy more, but what about now? One person can only buy one bowl of rice? This is not even enough to eat!
Not to mention that the people who came to buy rice were shocked, even the farmers who came to sell rice were shocked! Fuck, this is really poisonous! Then there were a few more flexible-minded peasants who saw the opportunity and quietly said to one of the ordinary people: "Brother, are you going to buy rice? In this case, I will sell you two taels of silver and one stone."
ps is very grateful to the book friend lf9988 for your reward! In addition, Baima took a look at the historical records. I also gave a reward last time. Thank you very much. Baima will write a better plot in return for your love. (End of this chapter)